


Night Call

by ReceiverofWisdom



Category: Halo, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, More Relationships to be added, More characters to be added, is that cool with you all, let's be honest I'm probably going to kill everyone in this, lot of deaths, lots of angst to come, smut might come in later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-02-20 16:24:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2435312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReceiverofWisdom/pseuds/ReceiverofWisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had watched her progress.</p><p>To be molded into the soldier humanity needed her to be.<br/>And she would progress right along with her, every step of the way, feet-first into hell.</p><p>Halo AU. If you know nothing of Halo, don't worry. I explain a lot of it throughout this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Orbit

**Author's Note:**

> I had this up before, but felt inadequate, so I took it down. Here's a refurbished version that I'll be keeping up on. Feel free to drop some critique.  
> This is cool. So cool. Pretend it's cool with me.

She had watched her progress.  
  
To be molded into the soldier humanity needed her to be. Ymir herself had progressed to great extents in spite of purposely inhibiting herself for the other’s advancement, and in the end she stood at her side in a salute that she had unconsciously perfected.  
  
She trembled slightly in her stance.  
  
Whether from nervous anticipation or unease, Ymir was unable to come to a conclusion over it.  
  
Her brows were furrowed with stern determination, but her lips quivered, just like the rest of her small and unconventional body that _barely_ held her accountable to be a soldier.  
  
Let alone one that would throw themselves feet-first into hell.  
  
And yet she knew damn well which path the other female was going to settle for. To some degree, the brunette could not care less. She was going to be with her every step, every fall of the way, as it had been intended from the beginning.  
  
Ymir shifted her boot out of place to shove against the side of Christa’s.  
  
She responded by darting those cool blue, worrisome eyes in the other soldier’s direction briefly before she melted into proper place. A blank stare, and rigid composure.  
  
As the authorative female figure stalked in front of Ymir, she stopped with considerate brevity to give her a once-over. Ymir regarded her in turn with a measure of confusion, as more often than not, those of command tended to slip themselves into the presence of the frighteningly small female soldier directly beside her. Were there not height restrictions?  
  
Somewhere along the line it was bypassed. Perhaps somewhere along the line of her recruitment humanity had an air of desperation.  
  
A curt frown was upon her lips as she churned her upper body to expectedly check Christa over, and then returned to the brunette for a final time in her inspection. The depths of her stare reflected perceptive understanding. She caught it easily, as if spoken in clarity  
  
And it vexed Ymir like nothing else.  
  
There were no age or gender restrictions for the field of aim that the blonde beside her would be falling into. Only that the volunteers met physical requirements.  
  
Two layers of screening and months of intense physical training awaited the both of them once the official cleared their positions and told them to file in.  
\--------------------------  
  
It would be their first non-controlled, anti-tempered orbital drop.  
  
She stood before her Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle. Or, drop pod for short. Sasha had taken to calling it an “Egg”, and the name grew to use within the small squadron.  
  
Christa was in the process of wiggling herself into her vehicle. It was a spectacle for those she was close to. With her frame in a nine foot structure where the conventional soldier had _some_ room to move, Ymir was fairly sure she could stand up inside of it and flail about.  
  
It proved to be a reason as to why those who situated her into it took more consideration into strapping her down, however. Fortunately Ymir’s temporary squad leader found it fit to better utilize her space for extra arms and supplies, aside from the Type-C Resupply Canisters they would drop to the surface of the planet within a few short hours.  
  
The objectives of the tasks they would need to completed merited unconventional warfare, and a lengthy period of time on the surface of such a planet. It was not a drop-shoot-evacuate kind of mission, and Ymir was dreading it already.  
  
Clambering into her “egg”, she waved off the nearest personnel who offered to secure her, and set her helmet on solidly. She had secured herself so many times in the practice runs, it almost became as much of a commodity as tying the laces of her boots, and she made it known as the one she had waved off proceeded to observe from a distance, until Bertolt showed distress in how the straps fit around his tall frame.  
  
 _There’s just a lot_ , She could hear him state from the distance. For some reason, she found it humorous enough to at least smirk, and yet the sharply dark contours of the glass on her helm prevailed to make no one the wiser.  
  
Catching the eye of the blonde female diagonal of her position before she, too, occupied herself with tying her hair and setting a helmet on, Ymir rested her head back and listened to the radio track within the carrier.  
  
A small little metallic box of melodies that, last time she checked, belonged to Jean. For such a teeny thing, it bellowed the echo of a smooth tune that filled in the silence and tense atmosphere of her other comrades. It kept awkward and tense conversations at bay.  
  
Truly a tool of pure asset.  
  
The song had been playing repeatedly. The lyrics, Jean felt, were relative to their situation with such a sedating rhythm that the repetition did no harm for annoyance.  
  
The brunette could mouth the words at that point.  
  
 _Take  
Me faraway  
_  
“A few thousand kilometers until target drop.”  
 _  
And make  
Me lose control  
  
_ Someone touched the dial down, barking orders to close the pods.  
  
So she strapped in her facing hatch, and did a quick peek at the hardened communications gear. The comm within her helmet was temporarily redundant unless such a thing inside the pod was to fail.  
  
“Hey Sasha,” she heard Connie start. “What comes first, the chicken, or the egg?”  
  
A few moments, and the directed brunette had caught onto the reference of her nickname to their vehicles, and had sputtered into nervous, jittery laughter that a couple other peopled joined into.  
  
Someone with a firm step, who Ymir could not identify through their heavy gear, went over and silenced the female and the one who provoked her by shoving helmets over their heads, which they had evidently failed to do previously. They were then instructed to “buck up” and “take some deep breaths to focus their jarheads”.  
  
She was closed into her pod, sealed. While writhing about in her crash seat, and sucking in a breath, she spared the time to look over the rudimentary control system engaged on the escape hatch.  
  
The thirty-second countdown began.  
  
Before she could even suck in a last secure breath, she had been fired through the camouflaged ship’s belly and into a freefall through the foreign planet’s atmosphere, hitting terminal velocity within an all-too-short-amount of time.  
  
Suddenly, she was thankful they declined giving any of her or her comrades something to eat before the drop. Preparations could not compare to the real thing.  
  
The pod stabilized into a feet-down position, as their motto implied, and she made it mandatory to keep her coordination in line with the limited steering she had been gifted. A rocky ride, but no anti-aircraft fire met her capsule from the Covenant forces below, ignorant to her team’s arrival.  
  
With streaks across the sky a commodity to that planet, she had likely been given very little attention even as the vehicle flared in the dark atmosphere. The element of surprise was entirely in her favour.  
  
Ceramic skin, Titanium-A, and Lead Foil kept Ymir from being cooked alive, but the heat inside was absolutely unbearable.  
  
At almost three thousand feet, exterior panels helped to slow her down and keep her on course.  
  
Powerless, she could only _hope_ the breaking rockets would engage. Sometimes they failed, leaving the occupant to die on impact. An entirely worthless death that anyone could fear.  
  
Somehow, she was unreasonably comfortable in digging her own grave.  
  
With a heavy jerking motion, and hard breath compressed from her lips as her speed was debilitated, her landing was not one of deathly impact but rather a very abrupt one.  
  
At a slightly awkward landing, her door was compressed at the hinges, giving the Helljumper reason to unstrap herself and kick at it hard while tugging the ejection handle, as opposed to being able to use the several buttons on the hinges of the door. Keeping their presence discreet was an absolute necessity. A stubborn escape, and yet she managed with what strength many ODST would not be able to manage. Irregular, and unconventional, it set her far apart from the rest when she made the issue of putting such strength and speed on display.  
  
Observing the position in which she landed, she deemed the extra tank of rocket fuel unnecessary to move to another location.  
  
Ymir began stripping the pod of supplies. Namely weapons, ammo, and the rations dedicated to maintain her preservation on the condemned turf until extra supplies would arrive. The ground trembled beneath her feet as the impacts of other pods made themselves known, and hiking a pack around her shoulders, she believed it was Mikasa’s voice on the other line through the comm in her helmet. _She_ survived the fall.  
  
She was well aware not everyone always did.  
  
Were the devices not directly connected along several interfaces, she would have called specifically for Christa. Rather, she remained quiet for the time being, choosing to inspect her current position as ground-force.  
  
One of her monitors in the pod were busted, so she favoured the small handheld device as Mikasa relayed her position, and the position of their temporary base that they would need to set up. It was all new ground for them. No designated control center to defend, no pre-established base.  
  
Eren confirmed his landing, as did Connie and Sasha. The rest followed through shortly in declaring their tiny victory.  
  
No one vocalized a concern for Ymir’s landing. But they ghosted the urgency that began to cross her mind.  
  
“Christa?” Armin pressed, after a short time of silence. She was the only one who had not spoken up.  
  
Her heart thrummed, and she began from a shaken walk into a jog to higher ground, spotting the small lines of smoke throughout an extensive area that marked each pod’s position in which they had landed in.  
  
To determine which one was hers seemed unlikely, and yet she scoured each position, waiting for _something_.  
  
Seconds ticked by in almost mourning silence, before she could make out Mikasa’s sigh from another line. “I’ll relay the coordinates on the eas-.”  
  
“I’m _here_.”  
  
Ymir released a pent exhale, tucking her M7 SMG under her arm, and securing one of four magazines that accompanied the weapon. She busied herself in attaching a suppressor to the end of the firearm. Their objective, after all, was to remain undetected. Gas-operated systems with a rotating breech. It was one of her favourite weapons, no matter how simplistic it seemed. Low-accuracy meant little to her when she maintained controlled buckles of close-range, it was devastating enough in her hands.  
  
“Can you flash your coordinates on the NAV system?” Armin prompted, concerned and appropriately professional.  
  
“I can’t move.” Christa had that tone of trapping desperation that Ymir could make out. “I got hit by some rounds… Somewhere by the mountain lines.”  
  
The communications fuzzed out for a minute, and the brunette suspected she was speaking into the device from the pod rather than the one in her helm, which would prove to be clearer. Taking the mountains into mind, Ymir stepped down from the raised slope, and began moving in the prescribed direction, regardless of previous orders.  
  
“It won’t open. The sides are really dented. I feel like I’m sinking, or something.”  
  
“She has a lot of our supplies.” Connie sounded freely, jumping to the defense of pursuing after her, almost as if concerned that Mikasa would forfeit the attempt for the more pressing matters of the mission. They were very, very compressed for time. The objectives that rested heavily on all of their collective consciences would be put into jeopardy over any detour.  
  
“I’ll go snag her, and meet you all at point Omega.” Ymir offered.  
  
As it seemed, some part of Mikasa realized that in spite of her leading position, to promote any kind of notion _against_ the recovery of a comrade would not settle well. Speaking as if she had that intent in the first place. “Hurry back.” She had agreed, afterwards giving instructions and re-routing their points.  
  
“Watch for the limb-lizards.” The warning had come from Eren, as his way of better saying ‘good luck’. He, of course, referred to the reptilian species of Kig-Yar, who were reportedly stationed about the area in the treetops. Excellent marksmen, and silent, they certainly had the upper-hand if they spotted an individual first. Ymir humoured him a slight laugh, and began settling back into the fluid sensation of weaving throughout the dense, marsh-like jungle.  
  
“Can you ping me a waypoint?” Ymir had finally conceded to switching on her helmet’s integrated NVD. It gave her surroundings a luminous green glow, and while she would glance at her aerial bird-view navigations, the majority of her attention was wisely gifted to scouring the various vines and tree-tops around her. Many were bare of their leaves on one side, giving her reason to believe that _someone’s_ impact site was nearby.  
  
“Right, right.” With her fate no longer questionable, Christa’s voice had lost the shaken, nervous edge. She was breathy, but cool-headed.  
  
Checking the navigations once more, the little circular frequency waves made themselves apparent more south-east of her position, and the brunette changed her direction a bit to meet the standards of the revelation.  
  
“How far are you?”  
  
“Not too far. Hang tight.”


	2. Temperate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feeling a bit iffy about how this is progressing. I'd love some feedback.

When strained silence stretched its neck, Connie and Sasha executed it with mild and thankfully non-distracting chatter. The sleek ebony helms adorned by them all gave conversations discretion from outside influence. Soft whispers were sound, and secure from any and all other ears in the vicinity. It gave silent combat operations an edge.   
  
She tromped up through trickles of little rivers through the sand. If she had not known better, she would have judged herself to be near a beach. But they were far, far from any major body of water above ground. Her boots soon clicked against gravel, steadfast into sloshing to the point she had to dramatically slow her own pace. Vigilant, the palm-sized not-quite-mosquitos bounced around against her impenetrable armour, just as irritated with their lack of success for a meal as Ymir had to swat them out of the glimmer of her visor.  
  
When she came upon the structure, she was just as surprised to see it as she was the backward-kneed foreigner crouched beside it.  
  
It was hunched and tinkering with outlet latches near the pod’s lop-sided base, the other half of which was gradually slithering into the material beneath it; thousands of pounds of it all, gurgling and being sucked into the muck. A feathered head shielded bulbous, ignorant yet intent eyes from the Helljumper’s view, giving her favourable stealth over the being. The tan skin tone foretold of the lighter and more boney verse of their species.  
  
Ymir had a sudden, profound comprehension over Christa’s sinking anxiety.  
  
The act of keeping her heavy footsteps soft was not something that was quite as praised as her ability of speed. Out of her regiment, she was undoubtedly the fastest in speeding across barren fields and through free-form obstacle courses and she was a close rival to the infamous Kelly-087, but the superbly sensitive ears of the Kig-Yar could pick up the slighter, deafened sloshing against the bogged water.   
  
With the sudden straighten of the spine, and the cock of a head to signal the exotic reptilian’s recognition of a threat, the Helljumper reacted quickly, hand searching near the upper-left of her armoured chest.  
  
The alarmed alien swerved to evade the blade belted in its direction that remained bound in a first that swung outwards once more in an attempt to catch it in the neck. While it was quick to evade the first motion to attack, Ymir’s combat knife fit snugly at an angle connecting the Kig-Yar’s neck to the base of its skull, lateral. Nearly twenty centimeters of high carbon, non-reflective steel choked the offender of its life as it was buried past hard plates along the creature’s jaw into tender flesh.  
  
Just as easily, the brunette’s other hand moved to drag the Jackal by the quill-like feathers along its head, before clamping around its elongated avian snout, smothering any further noises of alarm.  
  
As purple blood dribbled along the blade to the hand of the wielder, Ymir stooped to lay the body of the offender into the muck with a hateful gentleness, relieved to be free of the salty and boldly acidic stench that was proud even past the haze of the bog.   
  
Concealing her crime, she placed the being near a cluster of shrubbery sprouting out from the base of a tree, crinkled and wrung as if someone attempted to twist it and dry it from the moisture seeping into its trunk. In spite of the dead being’s physiological hollowness, it would eventually find its grave far beneath the circulating surface of the bog, concealed, and forgotten.  
  
Like so many others in the long duration of the war.  
  
Ymir opened a private channel through the comm to Christa, shifting the blade back into its respected sheath, before pounding a fist against the scorched metal.  
  
“Still alive in there? If you can push yourself back into the seat away from the door – I’m going to pull it open.”  
  
“ _It’s hard to breathe_.” A short pause and a dull thud from within. “You’re going to _pull it open_? Ymir, they’re _sealed_ , for a reason. The switches in here to blow it open aren’t even lit. I think all the power is just gone.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
The brunette settled herself to the side of the drop pod, shifting her feet from the spot where she had begun to sink. Thankfully to a degree, much slower than the something-odd-ton vehicle imprisoning her comrade. While it was a risk, she shoved her boot into the side of it for leverage, hooking gloved fingers along the broken and crumpled ridges of the door’s hinge.  
  
“Did you find anything? I mean – we can’t risk noise out here.”  
  
With absolute casualty to conversation, Ymir refocused her efforts, brushing aside the concealed blonde’s comment through her efforts at wrenching the door open enough for the other to, at least, slide through.  
  
More effort than not came towards making it _seem_ difficult, prying the scorched, broken, crumpled door from the hinges. When the high light of the moon past the canopies flooded in, Christa was revealed, gaping in shock at the _Helljumper_ heaving the titanium-composed door away, and discarding it beside the pod.  
  
At some point in the revelation of the interior, the female had removed her helmet, likely in a vain attempt and scrambling for more oxygen. Oxygen systems were present in pod and armour, as both were vacuum-enabled, the latter for approximately fifteen minutes at a time.   
  
Ymir stooped down, both feet planted on either side, and offered a hand, pulling Christa from the interior, before leaning again to collect some of the extra supplies that had been stored within the capsule, namely a pack, and a few extra weapons, when she began passing off to the shorter soldier, who stood continually stunned.  
  
“You _lifted that off_.”  
  
“Nah, it was just loose. I shoved and slid it off.”  
  
“No, you didn’t I saw you –.”  
  
Christa had been cut off with a rough, borderline hostile grip to the shoulder, and an _M90 class shotgun_ shoved into her arms. It followed with a rough tone, and an _MA5C_ to be slung about her shoulders; efficiently serving as a pack mule for a brief time being until they reached the designated point Omega.  
  
“You saw me clip it off the edge that was holding it there, and struggle to shove it off.”  
  
“ODSTs aren’t renown for being able to lift that much.”  
  
When the blonde remained defiant, Ymir fixed her with a hard look that would send a several few named within their squadron cowering, complacent, agreeing. While Christa seemed vaguely horrified, and more presentably worried, Ymir brushed that aside too. They had more on their hands than her saviour mishap.   
  
So the brunette backpedaled, snagged the other’s helmet from inside the slowly flooding pod, and shoved it down over her accusing expression.  
  
“See the point marker? That’s where we need to be by nineteen-hundred hours.”  
  
“Okay… Okay. It’s almost eighteen.”  
  
Certain that the precarious the situation was at a pass, and not to be mentioned again, she collected the other pack, and passed it to the blonde, situating the other at her own back with the length antenna.  
  
“Then let’s get moving. Tired of the smell here.”  
  
-  
 **Shoreline of Omega Point 1857 hours. Recreation: Hands-On Eyes Only**  
-  
  
“I heard Cole did the calculations _for_ his AI.”  
  
“That’s bullshit.”  
  
“No, really. All for the course inputs. He fired every single one of his Archers and Shivas at the Covenant’s fleet ship right afterwards. That thing had its plasma lines _flaring_!” Connie threw up his hands enthusiastically, shadowed gravely through the light of the small and concealed glow light, as the one-dark screen of his visor was shaved clear, maintaining a personal attitude apart from the graveness of their task. Fires were impractical for the terrain and the assignment they had been burdened with. Their suits were thermal custom for the tempest regions.  
  
Eren was rolling his eyes to nearly match the enthusiasm given over the prompted tale of heroics, and Mikasa briefly speculated the probability of them rolling right out of his head with the intensity.  
  
Few others, however, were absolutely enthused, which only promoted Connie to continue, when he was not gifted the order to close his mouth. They had downtime, and the area had been scoured clear. Enough of them remained vigilant throughout the area they were stationed. With the discretion of the comm systems in their helmets, conversation was loose as long as the majority of them maintained their wits.   
  
Mikasa had some reservations about informing Connie of the necessity of staying focused. His energy was absolutely brimming, if some of it was not release through conversation, it might have been enough to pop his helmet off.  
  
“Back then that stuff tore through human fleets like a hot knife to soft butter. He was the first one to even hit a Covenant cruiser like that. Heard the man was an absolute _genius_. Pulled right outta forced retirement ‘cause they had no one else to turn to. He also got involved with an Insurrectionist –.”  
  
“Hold it.”  
  
Mikasa stood from the sodden log she occupied, eyes down the scope of the _BR55HB_ , and those behind her followed suit in looking beyond their perimeter, defensive positions, as per Ackerman’s established procedure amongst them.  
  
When familiar forms dispersed from the line of maroon trees past the short slope of boulders and the small trickle of water stemming from the fogged forest, the formation steadily crumbled their guard bit by bit until on standby.  
  
When Ymir reached the elevated blue-sanded bank, she delivered some of the discarded weapons to the ground at her comrades’ feet, followed by Christa, before helping the aforementioned blonde shoulder out from the radio connection pack.   
  
It was passed from Reiner onto Armin, who immediately set to work in establishing a connection to command, or in the least, passageway for interception from their own familiar ships far beyond the planet’s atmosphere. Testing the connection, he removed his helm, adjusting frequencies.   
  
Christa, recognizing many faces out in the open, and not simply numbers on bands or chest plates of armour, shaved down her impenetrable dark visor as well, spelling worry in her humane expression that the helm would otherwise counter and prevent the recognition of.  
  
Ymir strained a particular ear towards what she had to say, not out of courtesy.   
  
Christa, feeling the burden of this, threw a brief glance in her direction, before standing at attention, lugging a rifle more firmly in her arms in an effort to balance its weight after the extensive hike.  
  
“Ymir said she took down a Jackal investigating my pod. It looked like it was alone. But they travel more in packs, don’t they?”  
  
“Yes,” Sasha confirmed. Her well-known experienced air amongst species and their methods of hunting, whether in wartime effort or otherwise, was rarely doubted by those who were knowledgeable of her efforts and presented skills. She was the go-to gal, whether it be species dedication, or taking the hat off an Elite from the expanse of thousands of yards.  
  
Christa was not quelled by the answer, nor anyone else who had heard it. Stealth and the element of surprise were of absolute necessity.  
  
“Jackals are selfish little pricks aren’t they?” Reiner had begun, taking it upon himself to sort the supplies dropped off by the newly-arrived duo. “What was stopping anything around the one she took down from just high-tailing it back to their little base over the other ridge to warn them?”  
  
“If one found the time to investigate the damn pod, I _don’t_ think that any of its buddies would have forfeited the chance to check it out either. I would have seen them around it. Their personal habits aren’t something the Covenant needs to conform to either. If they want one alone to stake out a huge part of territory, and then plant another one alone elsewhere to do the same, then they’re going to enforce that.” Ymir countered with a sour defensiveness. All of her training until that point would not have allowed her to make such a _rookie_ mistake. “I hid the body in the muck, took it out all silent like. The pod was sinking fast. No evidence left behind kind of thing.”  
  
“Wasn’t saying you were an idiot. Just offering up possibilities that we need to prepare for. Do we have eagle-view intel on the area yet? I just think –.” A guttural “oof” ended a potentially prosperous argument, judging by increasing severity of the opposing brunette’s expression.   
  
Annie had raised a line of energy capsules from one of the delivered packs, making sure none of them were cracked or damaged, before swinging the sturdy containers into the belly of the larger Helljumper, bag and all. The end of the bickering brought relief to those who, rather than bellowing their thoughts, preserved reasoning until coming up with appropriate rationale that would benefit their situation.  
  
Sasha seemed hard at thought and effort in doing just that, brows creased until it became questionable if she would be able to get them apart again simply by a relaxation of expression.   
  
“I want both squads set and ready for dust-off once you get that comm equipment established.” Annie had turned to Armin, promoting the order that she was quite sure Mikasa had lingering at the edge of her lips. The two managed a team well, despite one lacking social communication skills from time to time.  
  
“A loss of recon means we can’t be retrieved,” Armin had replied in timing, confirming the grave importance of linking to command above.  
  
Annie stared on, stooping once to retrieve a rifle left unattended against a boulder; her own, in fact. Most took it as a sign that they were about to get moving again.  
  
The group parted from what formation they had begun to maintain, and Bertolt motioned to bow and collect the diminutive flares that shied away the smothering night.   
  
Similarly, when the communications pack was secured on Armin, Jean took point up the short bluff that had been scoured earlier that evening. It was systematic to move together with such ease, such placement, and it was only broken when an explosive impact ruptured the canyon valley junction several points up from their position. The atmosphere flashed a bright, blinding white, before simmering down into an electric blue.  
  
“Phantom?” Reiner breathed in suspicion, more affirming the identification than questioning it.


End file.
